Mirror/doc/Articles/General/Start.md

Getting Started

This document describes steps to creating a multiplayer game with Mirror. The process described here is a simplified, higher level version of the actual process for a real game; it doesn’t always work exactly like this, but it provides a basic recipe for the process.

Video tutorials

Check out these awesome videos showing you how to get started with mirror. Courtesy of First Gear Games also known as Punfish in discord.

Script Templates

• Create new Network Behaviours and other common scripts faster

See Script Templates.

NetworkManager set-up

• Add a new game object to the Scene and rename it “NetworkManager”.
• Add the NetworkManager component to the “NetworkManager” game object.
• Add the NetworkManagerHUD component to the game object. This provides the default UI for managing the network game state.

See Using the NetworkManager.

Player Prefab

• Find the Prefab for the player game object in the game, or create a Prefab from the player game object
• Add the NetworkIdentity component to the player Prefab
• Set the playerPrefab in the NetworkManager’s Spawn Info section to the player Prefab
• Remove the player game object instance from the Scene if it exists in the Scene

See Player Objects for more information.

Player movement

• Add a NetworkTransform component to the player Prefab
• Check the Client Authority checkbox on the component.
• Update input and control scripts to respect isLocalPlayer
• Override OnStartLocalPlayer to take control of the Main Camera in the scene for the player.

For example, this script only processes input for the local player:

using UnityEngine;
using Mirror;

public class Controls : NetworkBehaviour
{
    void Update()
    {
        if (!isLocalPlayer)
        {
            // exit from update if this is not the local player
            return;
        }

        // handle player input for movement
    }
}

Basic player game state

• Make scripts that contain important data into NetworkBehaviours instead of MonoBehaviours
• Make important member variables into SyncVars

See State Synchronization.

Networked actions

• Make scripts that perform important actions into NetworkBehaviours instead of MonoBehaviours
• Update functions that perform important player actions to be commands

See Networked Actions.

Non-player game objects

Fix non-player prefabs such as enemies:

• Add the NetworkIdentity component
• Add the NetworkTransform component
• Register spawnable Prefabs with the NetworkManager
• Update scripts with game state and actions

Spawners

• Potentially change spawner scripts to be NetworkBehaviours
• Modify spawners to only run on the server (use isServer property or the OnStartServer() function)
• Call NetworkServer.Spawn() for created game objects

Spawn positions for players

• Add a new game object and place it at player’s start location
• Add the NetworkStartPosition component to the new game object